The Origin of Galactic Magnetic Fields: Oliver Gressel

by Sabine Hossenfelder 4 Jul 2013 Outreach, Physics
Published in the "From the Institute" section of Nordita News issue 2, 2013

This issue's feature article reported on recent progress on understanding the solar cycle with help of computer simulations of hot plasma and magnetic fields. Computer simulations like this are good not only to understand the physics of stars like our sun, but also for other systems. Oliver Gressel from Nordita's astrophysics group uses them to study the interstellar plasma and galactic magnetic fields. In this video, Oliver describes how we observe the magnetic fields of galaxies and how to explain these observations. A key role for the origin of galactic magnetic fields is played by supernovae explosions that create turbulence in the interstellar plasma.

For other video presentations of research at Nordita, see   www.nordita.org/video